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Articles about Mandatory Minimums and 3 Strikes
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: Abolish Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms for Small-Time Drug Offenders
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON June 23, 2004 - Many get-tough approaches to crime don't work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished, a report from the American Bar Association said Wednesday.
Laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave little room to consider differences among crimes and criminals, an ABA commission found in its study of problems in the criminal justice system. More people are behind bars for longer terms, but it is unclear whether the country is safer as a result, the ABA said.
The report and recommendations for changes in sentencing, prison conditions and programs for released prisoners follow criticism of the criminal justice system last year from Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
Kennedy asked the nation's largest lawyers' group to look at what he called unfair and even immoral practices throughout the criminal justice system, and he appeared alongside the group's president Wednesday to accept the first copy of the resulting study.
"The political phrase `tough on crime' should not lead us into moral blindness," Kennedy said.
SF CHRONICLE: EDITORIAL
Cost of 'three strikes' law
Friday, March 5, 2004
IT HAS been 10 years since California voters approved the "three strikes'' law in an effort to get tough on crime, propelled in part by the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma by parolee Richard Allen Davis.
The law was supposed to sweep career criminals off the street by mandating sentences of 25 years to life, without possibility of parole, for anyone with two ''strikes'' -- serious or violent felony convictions -- convicted of any new felony.
But studies by criminal-justice experts show the law to be unduly costly, overly punitive, racially discriminatory -- and failing its primary mission to curb crime.
With 57 percent of the third strikes being nonviolent offenses, typically drug violations or burglary, the law largely hasn't necessarily targeted the most dangerous criminals. Third strikes are 10 times more likely to be for a drug offense than for second-degree murder. In fact, third-strikers sent to prison on a drug offense outnumber the combined total whose offense was assault, rape and second-degree murder, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a research and public policy group that has been critical of the law.
The institute's 10-year analysis of the law also found African Americans and Latinos were far more likely to be imprisoned than white offenders for the same third-strike crimes.
Since 1994, the number of inmates in the state prison system grew by 22.6 percent. One in four prisoners -- 42,000 inmates -- are serving life terms under the three-strikes law. About $8.1 billion was spent to house these third- strikers -- $4.7 billion for convicts whose third strike was not a violent crime.
"We're filling our prisons with people who don't belong there,'' said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, whose reform attempts have been routinely rebuffed. "You can get less time for second-degree murder than for stealing a six-pack of beer. It's not what the public had in mind.''
Only the voters can repeal the three-strikes law. But the California Legislature, which has the authority to make changes consistent with its intent, should have the courage to at least require that the third strike be a violent crime.
PBS: THE PULPIT
Fred Nold's Legacy: Why We Send So Many Americans to Prison and Probably Shouldn't
August 12, 2004
By Robert X. Cringely
The interface between science and public policy is awkward at best. Scientists and academics need money for research, while politicians need research to build better weapons and sometimes to justify intended policy changes. But what happens if you look for scientific support for some new policy and the results of the research show that what you are intending to do is wrong? You can change your plan or ignore the research. This latter decision, one example of which is the topic of this column, brings with it some peril because if it later becomes known that the research was commissioned, completed, and ignored, then someone's job is on the line. So if you are going to bury research findings, it is a good idea to bury them deep.
America does a better job of putting people in prison than any other country. Just over two million Americans are behind bars right now, a number that has been growing far quicker than the overall population for more than 20 years. The impact of this mass imprisonment is felt especially in the African-American community, where one in 12 men are in prison or jail. The reasons given for these high numbers vary, but something that is frequently mentioned in any discussion is the impact U.S. federal sentencing guidelines have had on sending more people to jail for longer periods of time. Those very guidelines are now coming under scrutiny by the courts because their imposition may have denied some inmates their constitutional right to a trial by jury. That will be decided soon by the U.S. Supreme Court, but for the moment, all that I know for sure is that the sentencing guidelines in use now aren't working as intended, and the people who installed those guidelines probably knew this even before we started building so many prisons.
Even if the U.S. Supreme Court shortly finds that the sentencing guidelines are constitutional, THEY DON'T DETER CRIME.
Back in the early 1980s, a couple of economists at California's Hoover Institution (Michael Block and Fred Nold) did a study on the effect of monetary fines on antitrust enforcement. Their idea was to look at law enforcement as a purely economic activity. How could fines be structured to offer the greatest incentive to do the right thing? They did some research, gathered some data, published a paper and generally concluded that there were some economic forces involved and it just might be possible to not only encourage potential white collar criminals to think again -- these fines could also be a significant source of revenue for the enforcers. The paper was well received (you can still find it on the Internet), though no laws were changed as a result. But it got Block and Nold some attention from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Then the two got a call from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. This is the board that oversees federal criminal sentencing to ensure that sentences are being correctly applied by judges. "Correctly" in this case means that they are generally compliant with published guidelines. These guidelines are updated every 20 to 30 years, and it was time for such an update. The Feds thought that just maybe Block and Nold could come up with some economic twist for the new guidelines that would make them more effective at reducing crime. So they commissioned Block and Nold to do a big study budgeted at, I believe, $250,000.
They did the study in 1982, and the principle players were Block, Nold, and Sandy Lerner, who was their statistician. Block and Nold thought they were headed for the big time, and started a company to do this kind of work.
Then things began to go downhill. The DoJ didn't like what it was hearing as the study progressed, and they may have refused to accept the final paper. Certainly, they refused to pay because Block and Nold went out of business, and Nold went into a deep depression that ended with his suicide in 1983. But Block was actually named to the Sentencing Commission, where he served a six-year term. He also became a law professor at the University of Arizona, and today works at a conservative Arizona think-tank, the Goldwater Institute, and does not reply to my e-mails.
Why should we care about any of this?
Well, for one thing, I knew Fred Nold and hate to think that his work would die with him. But much more importantly, we should care because I'm told the Block and Nold study, which was intended to economically validate the proposed sentencing guidelines, instead showed that the new guidelines would actually create more crime than they would deter. More crime, more drug use, more robbery, more murder would be the result, not less. Not only that, but these guidelines would lead to entire segments of the population entering a downward economic spiral, taking away their American dream.
There is no mention anywhere of this study, which was completely buried by the DoJ under then-secretary Edwin Meese. The proposed sentencing guidelines were accepted unaltered and the world we have today is the result. We spend tens of billions per year on prisons to house people who don't contribute in any way to our economy. We tear apart the black and latino communities. The cost to society is immense, and as Block and Nold showed, unnecessary. AND THE FEDS KNEW THIS AT THE TIME.
It is one thing to make what turns out to have been a mistake and another thing altogether to make what you have reason to believe will be a mistake. Why would the DoJ, having good reason to believe that the new sentencing guidelines would create the very prison explosion we've seen in the last 20 years, go ahead with the new guidelines? My view is that they went ahead because they were more interested in punishment than deterrence. They went ahead because they didn't perceive those in prison as being constituents. They went ahead because it enabled the building of larger organizations with more power. They went ahead because the idea of a society with less crime is itself a threat to the prestige of those in law enforcement.
Where would we be today if the Block and Nold paper had been accepted and acted upon? Well, we'd probably have a few hundred thousand fewer people in prison. We'd probably have hundreds fewer prisons. Our black communities, especially, would probably be more economically productive. We'd probably have less drug use, fewer unwed mothers, it goes on and on.
And while the disappearance of the Block and Nold paper is an opportunity lost, whatever conclusions they made then would probably apply just as well today.
Nold is gone. Block won't talk, at least not to me. There may or may not be a file somewhere at the DoJ. But there is their statistician Sandy Lerner, who remembers well her work on the study. After Block and Nold folded, Sandy's next venture was to start a company with her husband, Len Bosack, that they called Cisco Systems. Maybe you've heard of it.
SF CHRONICLE
Sex offender's 3rd strike: He didn't register. Sacramento man with AIDS gets 27 years to life
Saturday, April 24, 2004
by Bob Egelko
A state appellate court has upheld the three-strikes sentence of 27 years to life in prison for a Sacramento man who had AIDS and had lived on the streets for most of the year before he was arrested for failing to register with police as a sex offender, prompting a blistering dissent from one of the justices.
Delbert Meeks had "a long and serious criminal history,'' which included convictions for rape and attempted rape, when he violated a law that was intended to let authorities keep track of dangerous sex criminals, said the Court of Appeal in Sacramento in a 2-1 decision April 13.
Dissenting Justice Richard Sims was outraged.
"What has become of our society?'' he asked in his dissent. "Why has 'compassion' become a dirty word in the law? I think that some years from now, law professors and law students will read this case and will ask, 'What on earth were they thinking?' "
.................
SF CHRONICLE: COLUMNISTS
Small fish in a big sentence
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
by Debra J. Saunders
LAST WEEK, Utah federal judge Paul G. Cassell sentenced a man who beat an elderly woman to death with a log to 22 years. A few hours later, Cassell sentenced a 25-year-old first-time drug offender to 55 years.
If you think Cassell liked sentencing a small-change drug dealer to more time than a violent killer, guess again. The judge had no choice. Federal law demanded the sentence, despite Cassell's pointed questioning if there was a "rational basis" for sentencing Weldon H. Angelos, the father of two young children, to more time than he could sentence a hijacker, murder or rapist.
Blame federal mandatory minimum sentencing rules.
.................
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Woman abused twice -- first by spouse, then by the legal system
Sunday, May 23, 2004
by Leonard Pitts
A few words on behalf of Dixie Shanahan.
Granted, some might consider her a less-than-sympathetic figure. After all, two years ago, Shanahan, a 36-year-old from Defiance, Iowa, killed her husband with a shotgun blast to the head. She left his body decomposing on the bed for a year.
But there is, as you might expect, more to the story.
Shanahan, backed up by friends, police reports and photographs of her own blackened eyes, testified that her husband Scott beat her repeatedly for years. She said he threw her down stairs, slammed her into walls, chained her in the basement for days at a time, shoved her face in the toilet and once hit her over the head with a plate because his mashed potatoes were runny.
The day she killed him was especially awful. He had been beating her for three days, she said, angry that she was pregnant with their third child. She says her husband had demanded that she get an abortion. When she refused, he vowed to beat the baby out of her, hammering her repeatedly in the stomach.
Shanahan fled the house. Her husband knocked her down and dragged her back inside by her hair. Shanahan says he pointed a shotgun and said, "This day is not over. I am going to kill you." Then he unplugged the telephones and took them into the bedroom.
What happened next is in dispute. Shanahan says she went into the room to call police. She says Scott made a threatening move and she grabbed the shotgun. Prosecutors say Scott was actually asleep when his wife shot him in the back of the head.
They offered a plea bargain that would have freed her in as little as four years. Shanahan turned it down, gambling that she could avoid a conviction. She could not. On Monday, she was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The sentence was non-negotiable under Iowa's mandatory sentencing laws. It'll be 35 years before she's eligible for parole.
Many observers are horrified. As one put it, the sentence "may be legal, but it is wrong." This was Charles Smith, the judge in the case. The sentence, said Shanahan's attorney, was like one last beating.
Could she have found a legal way to escape her husband? Yes. But the judgment of battered people is often unsound.
Should she have taken the plea bargain? Definitely. But you know what they say about the accuracy of hindsight.
The point is, even if you accept the prosecution's theory of the crime, this sentence is not justice. Not even close.
But then, justice has become a rarer commodity since the "get tough on crime" movement swept the nation during the Reagan years. Declaring the courts too soft on crime, state legislators around the country decided that judgment was too important to be left to judges. They enacted mandatory sentencing guidelines that were supposed to produce tougher and more uniform sentences.
Instead, those guidelines produce travesties. Consider the Connecticut college student who was peripherally involved in her boyfriend's drug ring -- never sold drugs, never used them, had never been in trouble before.
Twenty-five years.
Then there's the Iowa man who kicked a door in.
Another 25 years.
And let us not forget the California man who stole a slice of pepperoni pizza.
Twenty-five to life.
Like the zero tolerance school policies they resemble, mandatory sentencing guidelines leave no room for compassion or common sense. And you have to wonder how many more of these tragic absurdities it will take before legislators concede the obvious: these are awful laws.
While we await that attack of courage, Dixie Shanahan is filing her appeal and beginning her sentence.
Anyone who thinks that's justice doesn't know the meaning of the word.
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